The Royal Rumble is fast approaching, and this little mini-series rolls on! I’ve still got a ways to go here, previewing ten favorites to win both the Men’s and Women’s Royal Rumble matches! Remember, you can vote on who you want the last two to be right here! Voting closes when the clock strikes midnight on Friday! There’s plenty more names yet to be covered, including the Goddess herself, Alexa Bliss! So let’s go ahead and dive right into that one!
Alexa Bliss – Relevant Stats
- WWE Debut: 2016 (Made NXT debut in 2013)
- First Rumble appearance: 2019
- She has never won a Rumble match before.
- This will be her second Rumble appearance.
- She has amassed two total eliminations.
- She is a three time WWE Raw Women’s Champion and a two time WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion.
- Current betting odds: +2200
Alexa is an interesting case study. She was among the first in what has become a long line of NXT women who found themselves called up unreasonably early in their development. In her case, this was before she could even make her Takeover debut. Whereas the likes of Dana Brooke, Carmella, Lacey Evans, Mandy Rose, Liv Morgan, Sarah Logan and others struggled early on because of this trend, Alexa managed to make a name for herself anyway, being strong enough as a character to cover for her weaknesses.
She’s charismatic and has a unique enough look – atleast compared to the legion of other blondes WWE always goes for – to stand out. She’s athletic and, while she won’t make anyone’s list of top workers, she’s capable enough with the right opponent.
This was enough for her to become one of the top heels of the division and stay that way for her first few years on the main roster.
During that time, she became a five-time Women’s Champion, and was notably the first to win both the Raw and SmackDown Women’s titles. She was quite consistent in her success on both brands. Her peak was likely when she won the inaugural women’s Elimination Chamber match, retaining her title and surprising many.
Her winning ways continued until Ronda Rousey defeated her at SummerSlam. Rousey then retained against her in a rematch at Hell In A Cell, during which Bliss suffered a concussion. This ended her 2018 but she did get cleared in time for the 2019 Rumble. And, well…
How 2019 Went For Alexa Bliss:
Hrm. How quickly things change. She did make her comeback with some fanfare, but after that, for some reason she didn’t have another televised match until the Raw after Mania, in spite of seemingly being cleared the whole time. The Rumble reappearance aside, she was basically gone from October of 2018 to April of 2019. And in wrestling, that’s a really, really long time. A lot changed in that timeframe. And one of them seemed to be Alexa’s place in the world of WWE.
They still like her, but it’s pretty clear that she’s not among their most valued women anymore. Mostly thanks to injury, she’s fallen down the pecking order pretty hard. So much so that it’s kinda crazy to think she was the top heel in the division like, a year and a half ago.
But it’s not like it was a terrible year or anything. She had a better than 2019 then some people, certainly. But it was easily her least successful year since joining the main roster. After finally making a consistent return in April, Alexa Bliss would pursue the singles titles again. Eventually she became a rival to Bayley, and along the way, paired herself up with Nikki Cross. In the beginning their dynamic was that Alexa was a clear heel just using the naive, not quite mentally stable Nikki.
Her pursuit of Bayley culminated in one of the most over-the-top definitive defeats of the year.
It’s kind of amazing how this isn’t really talked about, and even at the time wasn’t made into a very big deal. But Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross challenged Bayley to a handicap match with her title on the line at Extreme Rules. And… well. With their 2-on-1 advantage, they promptly got their asses kicked. There’s no other way to put it. The way the match was designed it was clearly how badly they needed that double team advantage, because even with it, Bayley was taking it to them basically the whole time. I was honestly stunned with the ease that Bayley defeated them both, lowkey one of the strongest babyface wins all year.
Seeing that, I was convinced that they’d already given up on Alexa and Nikki’s act. I mean they had zero credibility after that, they were both clearly dead in the water.
Buuut it’s WWE, so obviously they won the Women’s Tag Team titles a month later.
By the time this happened Nikki had just kinda quietly turned into a heel alongside Alexa with their unique dynamic being entirely discarded. And pretty much the moment they won, they inexplicably both turned babyface. Which, as it turned out, was because they would eventually lose the titles to the Kabuki Warriors in October who, basically that very night decided to be heels.
After being drafted to SmackDown and taking another brief hiatus, she rejoined with Nikki in November and the two had a little TV feud with Fire & Desire to close out the year.
So where does that leave her chances?
Well… they’re not great. I’m mostly covering her here because I still think she’s one of the more significant women on the roster. She’s achieved a lot and had a lengthy run of success, one bum year does not sink her. Even if the gap between her and the Four Horsewomen is currently wider than it ever has been, it’s still pretty easy to think that eventually she’ll bounce back into the fray. But at the moment she’s definitely in the middle of the pack. She’s never been someone you can say that about on the main roster before, but that’s the state of things. That said, if there’s one tried and true way to bounce back outta nowhere, it’s winning the Royal Rumble.
What would her story be?
She doesn’t currently have much of a ready-made feud with any of the women she’d be likely to face at Mania. (Becky, Asuka, Bayley or Lacey.) Her story would be more personal, putting herself back in the upper echelon after falling off in the past year. It would be a neat contrast to put her against someone like Lacey. Evans would’ve just now gotten to the mountaintop whereas Alexa would be trying to climb back there. This probably wouldn’t be a particularly good match, but the build could be good.
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